The public management of a government is always a compromise between the exercise of established administrative functions and the innovations driven by politics. Correspondingly, we have civil servants, more focused on ensuring the former, and political personnel, more focused on the latter. Management will be good if the fit between the motivations and temperaments of both groups is good, and if the level of competence of each is high. Ideally, the natural conservatism of the civil servant will be tempered by the drive of political personnel, and vice versa. Note: the contrast of the competent civil servant and the incompetent politician is a caricature. There are all sorts in both groups.
Efforts to promote highly competent administration should be welcomed. The Catalan government has just presented a bill for one aspect: public executives. I will comment on it.
It is a brief and quite open text. Any errors that may be made in later regulations will be more correctable than those already in the law.
With some exceptions (all reasonable) three types of public executives are distinguished.
Deputy Directors General. A civil service model not very different from what we already have is outlined. It is understood that a deputy general director position is a civil servant position, but not to the extent that, as established, one must already be one (level A1) to apply. A test that is relevant to me is whether a Catalan woman who has completed a master's degree at the London School of Economics or the College of Europe in Bruges, and who has started a professional career in London or the EU – but who is not a civil servant of the Generalitat – will be able to apply for the management position. If I read the text correctly, the answer is no. A pity. In any case: if, as it seems, deputy directors will be appointed through internal promotion, fostering competition will depend on training initiatives aimed at public employees. A key issue to look after.
Directors of public sector entities. In summary: the current best practices are ratified and generalized. In particular, it is good that appointments are isolated from political cycles. Since professional profiles are sought, the training criteria for selection committees (for all types of directors) should be refined. The text, in a clearly improvable article 5.4, states that its members are appointed by the government "among persons of recognized professional or academic prestige in the field of human resources and public administration". I would change the "and" to an "or" and add "experts in the thematic area of the appointment". A positive aspect is the recognition that for the incorporation of managerial talent, the remuneration policy cannot only refer to the administration itself; it must also refer to the relevant economic environment. A doubtful aspect is allowing only two levels. Three would be better.
Director Generals (and of services). The position of Director General is not restricted to civil servants; it can be a labor contract employee. This is good: a half-full glass. My Master's from the College of Bruges will allow me to apply. But I must say that this category is where the most significant change lies, and where I confess I have perplexities and doubts. Until now, as in France, when a new government is formed, Directors General do not automatically lose their position, but the new government can dismiss them and appoint new ones. And we have seen everything, including Directors General who, due to the weight of their competence, have been renewed by one government after another. Except for a 20% reserve that I don't know how it will fit in, it is now intended to move to a British model where Directors General are permanent, with a seven-year contract. The German case would be intermediate. I fear that a British graft imposed on an administration design as French as ours will not work. I believe it is appropriate for the government to appoint Directors General, but not, for example, for a new government to only be able to rely on Directors General from the same sensibility as previous governments. At a minimum, it would be necessary to ensure that there are no synchronised waves of appointments (coinciding or not with the electoral period). Specifically: that one-seventh of them can be renewed each year.
No government is interested in appointing incompetent people. It may not know enough or may owe favors. It is on these factors that action should be taken: observatories, information periods. Lots and lots of light. But I do not consider it a defect for a Director General to be motivated by political passion. And I also think it would be optimal for their professionalization to emerge through natural selection. We already have many good examples of this.
